In the so great consternation in which the loss of Manila placed your vassals, and for this reason many of the criminal class having fled from prison, and continuing their depraved morals, they threw into disorder the environs of this city and its immediate villages. Your reverend archbishop did not allow the perverse Orendain and Don Cesar Fallet [174] the declared enemies of your Majesty, to stir from his side. They, availing themselves of the disturbances caused by these malevolent persons, painted those disturbances to his Excellency, saying that there was sedition and unrest among all the Indians, who, having conspired against the Spaniards, were persecuting them as wild beasts; that already in one province one of them had elevated himself as emperor and refused obedience to your Majesty; that the province of Bulacan was in the same condition; that all the others would follow their example; that one of these days they would have Señor Anda tied up, if they did not first deprive him of life; that consequently, as it was advisable to the services of both Majesties and for the public quiet, and so that so much Christian blood might not be shed, his Excellency ought to yield all the islands, and cause Señor Anda to descend; that if he did not condescend to do so, nothing else would result than the ruin of all these domains, the loss of Christianity, and the execution by the English of the sentence that had been pronounced of putting to the sword all the Spaniards; that your Majesty would never be able to consider yourself as well served; and that consequently he should have a regard to his conscience. I understand well, Sire, how if he considered all those motives, and that from them would follow the total ruin of these islands, he should then on that account have condescended to redeem them [from ruin] by ceding them, in regard to the fact that this could not be of any service to the English, since it only concerns your Majesty. But to give credit to these two traitors, who knowingly exaggerated these disturbances to him, and not to proceed, with more knowledge, to write me in place of the letters ordering the Spaniards to descend, to inform him regarding the condition of the provinces, and advise me, for my course, of what was happening in Manila, by directing prudently so glorious an end after the twenty odd days that the fort had been taken; and continuing the obligation to surrender these domains with the tenacity which his above-cited letters show, (although the most of the suggestions of the two traitors were now seen to be false, as the provinces were quiet), he proceeded to sign the cession, and even after seeing the Catholic arms so flourishing and powerful, whose victories, patent to all the world, were incredible to his Excellency, yet he prosecuted this undertaking even to the grave. [175] In truth, Sire, I do not know what apology that venerable prelate can give your Majesty for such actions.